Facebook grief groups 'not worth it', say police

Cameron Atfield

Two recent attacks on Facebook groups set up as tributes for slain Queensland children should serve as a warning to others to consider whether such acts were worth the risk, police said yesterday.

The tragic deaths of 12-year-old Elliott Fletcher in a schoolyard knife attack last week and this week's abduction and murder of eight-year-old Bundaberg schoolgirl Trinity Bates both prompted well-meaning people to set up Facebook groups in their memories.

But within hours, both groups were vandalised with offensive material - including images depicting child pornography - and sickening messages.

Related Content

Detective Superintendent Peter Crawford of the State Crime Operations Command Child Safety and Sexual Crime Group told Fairfax Radio 4BC people should think twice before setting up such social networking groups.

"I would say anybody thinking about putting these sites up in the future need to realise that they're going to attract these kinds of people," Detective Crawford said.

Advertisement

"The reality is once you open these sites up to open access to anyone on the internet, you are going to attract unsavoury people and clearly that's occurred again," he said.

"While they have committed offences and we will look to prosecute them, perhaps prevention's a better approach."

A screengrab of one of the Facebook groups set up after the death of Trinity Bates.

Detective Crawford said Queensland Police had sought information from Facebook and had opened a criminal investigation into both cyber attacks.

"It'll take a while to track down through the various processes who the people involved are," he said.

"The difficulty is the ability of people to disguise their identity on the internet means that we've got to do a lot of work to be able to track down the actual real identity of the people who are committing the offences."

University of Sydney cultural studies lecturer Melissa Gregg said some internet subcultures encouraged anti-social behaviour and treated such offensive behaviour as currency.

"This is the difficulty with the internet becoming as mainstream as it has become in the past few years," she said.

"There's a long history of aggression and having negative attitudes towards others is just as highly rewarded as any kind of positive interaction and I think that is one of things that gets lost in the mainstream uptake of these technologies."

Dr Gregg said sites like Facebook generally reflected the better nature of the internet, which was "a bit more pleasant and controllable" than other corners of the web.

"The unleashed nature of the internet being a really wild and unknown space is really coming out again, where I think quite a lot of people may fall for the assumption that it's been well tamed through the habitual ways people use sites like Facebook," she said.

"It's not surprising that if something is getting a lot of media attention already that people who are aspiring to a bit of notoriety or fame will use that as an opportunity to develop that."

Facebook director of communications and public policy Debbie Frost said the website was largely self-regulated and depended on users to report offensive content.

"We want Facebook to be a place where people can openly discuss issues and express their views, while respecting the rights and feelings of others," she said in a statement.

"When sharing an opinion turns into direct statements of hate or threats against an individual, for example, or when users upload nudity, pornography, or violent photos or videos, the professional reviewers on our team take quick action to respond to reports, remove the content, and either warn or disable the accounts of those responsible."

Ms Frost said Facebook had acted on complaints about the offensive behaviour on the group pages.

"We responded to reports by users, as well as to direct contact from law enforcement, and have removed the groups and disabled the accounts of the people responsible," she said.

"We strongly encourage anyone who creates a page or group on Facebook to use the specific privacy controls to manage their pages or groups they set up, and block or ban anyone who tries to post offensive content.

"We also encourage our users to continue to use our tools to report objectionable content so that we can investigate reports and take action."